Path of the Eclipse (54 page)

“What is it, then?” Padmiri was not yet alarmed, though his suffering touched her.

As he turned back toward her, the musicians fell silent. Now he was between her and the sun, impossibly dark, his face unreadable. “I will not lie to you about … what I require. It would be useless, wouldn’t it?” he added with wry sorrow.

“Yes, it would be useless,” she answered, her eyes never leaving the shadow of his face.

“But I have not … I was not … Padmiri, you have been solace for me, and I have needed solace.” This was more difficult to say than he had thought possible. Now he was glad that she did not question him, that she was apparently content to hear him out. “When I loved you, it should have been entirely for yourself. And it wasn’t.” He touched her with one finger, tracing the curve of her upper lip. “I did not want to say this.”

“And why did you?” She was hurt a bit, she thought, but only a bit.

“Because I want to make love to you again, only for yourself.” He was peripherally aware that the slaves had gathered up their instruments and gone into the house, leaving him alone with Padmiri on the terrace over the garden.

Now she caught his hand in hers. “Who else were you thinking of, before?”

Saint-Germain hesitated. “She’s dead. Does it matter who she was?” His grief was too old to be despair, but there was more than sorrow in his voice.

“It matters,” Padmiri said, though she did not entirely believe it: she wanted to know what haunted Saint-Germain.

His small, long fingers tightened on hers. “It was more than a year ago, in China. There was a woman there. I was her lover. The Mongols killed her.” He held out his other hand to Padmiri and was oddly grateful when she took it. “When I loved you, I was using you, not substituting you, but … escaping from her memory.”

“Have you accepted her death?” She said it evenly enough, hiding the dread she felt.

“Accepted her death,” Saint-Germain echoed. “What has that to do with it? My acceptance won’t change it. Chih-Yü is dead. It’s not a matter for debate.”

“Even for you?” she asked before she could stop herself.

“For me?” He was startled, and there was an intensity in his unseen eyes.

“You are one of Shiva’s creatures, who have been touched by death and refused its hold, aren’t you?” Had she dared to say this ten years ago, the words alone would have terrified her, but now, feeling the reality of age with her bones, she could not be afraid.

Saint-Germain’s voice was enigmatic. “It was not argument that made me what I am but a far more compelling force.” He turned slightly, and the fading light of the sun painted a brilliant line down his brow, along the edge of his eye, the rise of his cheekbone and the arch of his nostril, the line of his mouth, the edge of his jaw, the strong bend of his neck. When he spoke, his small, even teeth shone. “She was not like me.”

“And I?” Padmiri was not sure what she wanted his answer to be.

“No,” Saint-Germain said in a low tone. “And you need not be, if that is your wish.”

Padmiri did not react to this, but instead asked, “You said that you wanted to escape her memory with me. Did you?”

He came one step nearer. “Yes. I will not forget her, but … her loss is no longer an open wound in me.” He released her hands, but only to turn her face up toward him. “Do you forgive me?”

“For what?” She rose from the bench and walked away from him down the darkened terrace. “For thinking I had enough worth that you would be able to end your sorrow with me? For loving me through your grief? Where is the offense, that you ask forgiveness?”

Saint-Germain had not followed her, listening intently as she spoke, watching her as she moved. “And for yourself?”

She faced him, needing the distance between them, her thoughts crowding in on one another. “With me it is different. I’ve learned to look beyond the things I was taught, but the lesson was not easily acquired.”

“No,” Saint-Germain said. “It never is.”

“When my brothers and cousins rose against Dantinusha, I was certain that my studying would show me wisdom, and when the rebellion ended and much of my family was put to death, I searched for comfort that was not to be had. I, too, have bandaged my grief with the pleasures of the flesh, but blindly, blindly.” There were tears in her eyes and she dashed them away. “I have read some of the teachings of the West, so when you speak of forgiveness, I remember reading of expiation. Is that more reasonable than karma, where forgiveness and expiation are part of the turning of the Wheel?” She had reached the terrace balustrade and now she leaned on it, gazing toward the irregular darkness of distant trees. “Why should I forgive you, when I wanted you? Why does it matter that you were mourning a dead woman? Who of us reaches the middle and the end of life without a few ghosts?”

Saint-Germain felt his memories stir, and faces, bodies, touches, blood, came back to him like the flickering light of torches. He had forgot none of them, could not forget them. Some were filled with amusement and delight, some with tremors of fear or desire, some with passion, a few with poignancy intense and aching. So few were left to him, so few! Even those who had changed and wakened into his life were vulnerable, and he had lost many of them. He tried to speak, but could not express the desire and the anguish in him.

“It doesn’t matter what you are. At one time it might have. If I had known before you came here, I would have refused to have you stay. I admit that.” She looked at him with the last vestiges of defiance in her eyes. “And perhaps, had I discovered the truth about you some … other way, I would have asked that you go elsewhere. I couldn’t do that now.” Padmiri felt the cold of night on her, and tugged her shawl tighter. “So you see, you are not the only one who has sacrificed to Maya. She is a most persuasive goddess. You, who ask for forgiveness, will you forgive me?”

In seven quick strides Saint-Germain closed the distance between them. He felt her arms tighten around him as he embraced her, and the worst of his hurt faded a little. “Padmiri,” he whispered, making a litany of her name.

Padmiri had never expected to find such palliation in a lover. For her, his kisses were anodyne, healing her of wounds that others could not see. She was startled that she still wept, and sought to explain this, without understanding it herself. Saint-Germain stilled her jumbled protests and held her securely until she had cried herself out.

“Don’t force yourself to stop,” he said as she pulled back from him. “I have no tears—I often envy those who do.”

She had taken the hem of her shawl and was daubing at her eyes with it. “No, I’m through. I don’t know why it happened.” Her words were still muffled. As much as she took consolation from him, she wished that he would leave her time alone, until her thoughts were clearer. She wanted to pause before her shrine to the elephant-headed Ghanesh and ask his aid in clarifying her thoughts.

Saint-Germain released her. “I will go to my laboratory. If you should decide you want to see me, my servant will bring me word of it.”

“Your servant? How?”

He looked down at her. “Send word to your slaves that you wish for certain books of poetry, ones that you do not have readily to hand. Rogerio spends part of every evening in their quarters, and tonight I promise you he will be there until midnight. If you make such a request, he will hear it and understand. And if you should prefer that I keep away…”—he shrugged sadly—“I would prefer to be with you, but not against your will.”

“Rachura, the Brahmin who serves my brother, would tell you that will itself is only another manifestation of Maya, and that all is nothing but the turning of the Wheel.” When had she turned away from the great teaching? she asked herself. Her brother had said that she was setting her will above that of her family when she came to live in this house. Rachura predicted then that she would not stay long in such isolation, but time had proved him wrong. There had been a scholar from Aleppo who had visited her once and read to her from the various scriptures and commentaries of the West as well as from Islamic texts. That visit had been brief and for some months thereafter Padmiri had had to endure her brother’s displeasure.

Saint-Germain could see that her thoughts were drifting, and so he waited before he spoke again. “It may be only the turning of the Wheel, but there are times you must choose. If the choice is nothing but illusion, does it matter? You will still have to decide. Rachura deplores the successes of the Sultan Shams-ud-din Iletmish, and claims that the encroachment of his forces insults the gods. If there is only the Wheel, how may the gods be insulted?” His voice was kind, and his dark, compelling eyes were warm. “Padmiri, Padmiri, do as you wish to do.”

Her laughter was not easy to hear. “How simple it sounds,” she said to him, moving a few steps away. “No, no, don’t argue with me. Let me decide for myself. If you speak again…”

Saint-Germain bowed slightly, watching her with concern. He had paid the price of delitescence too often to wish a further alienation on her, and he was aware that he could use all his compelling strength to dismiss her uncertainties—yet that seemed to be an unconscionable intrusion. All her life, Padmiri had been cheated of her will. Any coercion he used would tarnish him in her eyes, and ultimately poison their association. His eyes did not leave her as she reached the end of the terrace where the musicians had been and looked back at him.

“Let me have time to myself, Saint-Germain,” she said. “I will let you know my decision.” She put her hand on the latch of the nearest door. “I will try not to keep you waiting too long.”

Saint-Germain neither moved nor spoke, but his dark eyes held hers with such intensity that it seemed he touched her.

Padmiri had barely stepped into the terrace room and closed the door when Bhatin appeared beside her. She was startled to see him and might have demanded what he was doing there when he abased himself and spoke.

“When the musicians came in and you did not, there were those of us who were concerned. I was coming to see if you required my aid, mistress. There is danger attendant on that foreigner. The scorpions show that this is true.” He stood up, his oddly youthful face impassive.

“Yes, the scorpions,” Padmiri said, and could not entirely suppress a grue. No one had been able to explain the scorpions, and Saint-Germain had asked her that an issue not be made of it. She was not convinced that she would not be wise to beat the truth out of her slaves, and only the certainty that Saint-Germain would condemn such tactics prevented her from ordering a general flogging.

“He should be sent away, mistress,” Bhatin murmured, his eyes respectfully averted.

Until a moment before Padmiri had thought that this might be the best course, but now she said, “He has been commended to me as a guest by my brother, the Rajah. He is a man of wide learning and experience. As it is unlikely that I will be allowed to travel, I am determined to listen to all he tells me of other lands.” She rarely used her most regal manner, but she did now. Her head was high and her dark eyes glittered. “If I should hear of any insolence offered to him, it will be the worse for you and the rest of this household.”

Bhatin crossed his hands on his breast. “It is your right to do so, mistress. We are yours to do with as you see fit.” It was true: they both knew it, but he had never acknowledged this aloud.

“Yes,” she declared. “Because I live in seclusion, I am sometimes lax. But I have not forgotten my rights, Bhatin.” The warning was clear, and she used it to end their speech. She went past him into the hall that led to her quarters, and did not look back to see whether or not Bhatin followed her.

It was almost midnight when she sent word to the slaves’ quarters that she wanted the volumes of Bengali philosophical rhymes. She had sat by herself in the intervening hours, mustering arguments for and against seeing Saint-Germain. In the end, it was not her intellect but her isolation that won.

Saint-Germain came into her room through a tall window some two stories above the ground: he was a shape, a darkness against the stars, and then he stepped into the soft light of the oil lamps and became himself again. “I had almost lost hope,” he said to Padmiri as he approached her.

She stopped him with a gesture. “And I.” As befitted her rank, she wore a robe of thin muslin that did not provide enough warmth on this chill night. Her long hair was plaited and bound up with strands of silken cord. “I have been pondering,” she went on, indicating that he should be seated. “I was remembering my mother and her immolation, and I have realized that I have followed her example, which was what I wanted least to do.”

“Padmiri, you need not—” he began, but she interrupted him.

“Rather than give myself to a husband and the anonymity of a wife’s estate, I have banished myself and surrendered to scholarship what I might have given to children. There is no escape from the turning of the Wheel, but complete extinguishing of self. Those who have taken the teachings of Buddha say that they relinquish all desire, including the desire to be free of desire, and then they are one with the god. I can’t do that. How much I have lost, thinking that I gained!” Her hands covered her face but she did not weep.

Saint-Germain rose and went to her. “Scholarship is not the same thing as a funeral pyre.” One small hand pressed her to him, the other loosened the silk that held her hair so that the long plaits fell down her back, reaching the top of her hip.

“I am nothing. I am less than my eunuch Bhatin!” Her hands dug fiercely into his shoulders and she trembled as she spoke.

“No, Padmiri, no.” The scent of her perfumed hair was in his nostrils, and the fragrance of her flesh.

“What have I? What?” She looked up at him and her face was tragic.

“Life, Padmiri.”

She saw the ancient despair in his eyes and could not mock it. Life seemed paltry to her, and without meaning, but she was unable to say so with those penetrating dark eyes on her. Slowly her hands relaxed and dropped to her sides. To fill the silence, she said, “I’m … distraught.”

His lips brushed her brow. “Be calm, cherished one. Do not torment yourself for this.” He lifted her hands to his lips and kissed them, the backs and then the palms.